Not the most exciting week for WWE in-ring action, but it helped a really fun match that would probably go unmentioned in a week of workrate-type matches stand out.
RAW had a wreck of a Memorial Day episode outside of the great Cena/Styles angle. The 6-man main was neat, but standard stuff that never went next level outside of the last minute. Main Event, average. Superstars, outright bad, and it had a match with the guy who’s in the Match of the Week. Gargano/Ciampa vs. The Revival from NXT was fun, but not standout.
SmackDown! was the show of the week, with three good matches in Ambrose/Zayn vs. Owens/Rio, AJ vs. Kofi, and this match. Becky vs. Charlotte seemed good too, but they cut out the entire heat segment.
So I’m going with Rusev vs. Jack Swagger as WWE TV Match of the Week. Rusev is having another great run. Not everything is standout, but he had fun matches with Kalisto, does great squashes, and has these weirdly great matches with other big guys like Ryback and Swagger. Based on this, I think the Titus match will be hot. Swagger has never really been much to me but his style is something that can be worked around and with the right guy he can put on a fine WWE-style match, and that happened here.
This only goes like 5 minutes but they make use of every second, starting fast with Rusev attacking Swagger and throwing him shoulder-first into the steps. A fired up Swagger fights hard while selling the arm until Rusev overwhelms him and acts like a total cock. Ripping a guy’s shirt off is standard fare in wrestling, but Rusev’s dickishness makes it seem like an art. The timing of everything here was on point to whip the crowd into a frenzy after like two minutes of action. The crowd was even hot for standard stuff like Swagger’s ankle lock (which history says Rusev’s escaping, and he did) and Swagger fighting out of the Accolade (which history says he won’t, and he didn’t).
Two big, legit dudes kept things moving and made use of their time. Jim Ross would’ve loved this shit.
Good solid TV wrestling.
